The Surprising Secret Shawn Achor Reveals About Bringing Others Along to Success
Schawbel: What are a few of your strategies for unlocking our potential, while not giving up our happiness? What’s the trade off between potential and happiness?
Achor: First, surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you not the stress in you. In other words, look at the eight people you spend the most time with and see if they deplete or supply energy to you. Then spend more time with–or recruit more people into—the part of your social support network that supports your success. The goal is to not separate ourselves from others. Stars in isolation collapse in on themselves. You can see this in sports. You can see this with kids who ace exams at Harvard in isolation then can’t manage a team or bring a product to market because it requires others. Second, if your “ecosystem of potential” predicts your success, you need to activate them. When we do this we usually praise, but in my work, I’m finding that we don’t praise, we compare—you were the best sales person, you worked harder than anyone else, you’re the smartest kid. Bringing only the top performers up on stage diminishes the 95% who are not on stage. The worst kind compliment I get is “you were the best speaker today.” Sometimes I’m standing next to other speaker friends who were just diminished, and often I won’t be the best speaker, so now I’m unbalanced in the future. It is better to praise qualities (like comedic timing) rather than engage in comparison praise. And we need to refract the light; if you receive praise, accept it but also shine it on someone who got you there. You like my book? My wife Michelle Gielan is an amazing editor. Your daughter scored a goal…thanks to mom getting us out on a rainy day and her brother cheering her on. We need prism praise not comparison praise. Finally, all the happiness habits from my TED talk can be done WITH others instead of alone. Share your gratitudes at the dinner table. Exercise with someone instead of alone. Meditate with a group, etc. This magnifies the benefits.
